Sierra adventure game chronology

Pre-AGI (1980-1984)

In 1980, Ken and Roberta Williams created Mystery House, the first graphical adventure ever, for Apple II computers. It would be an enormous success, and the Williams would fund On-Line systems, rename it Sierra On-Line, and develop sequels, establishing Sierra's very first adventure game series before King's Quest was even conceived of. They would also publish a few adventure games by other developers, including Al Lowe of future Leisure Suit Larry fame.

All of these games were developed for Apple II computers, and most were ported to other 8-bit computers as well. A few were also ported to IBM's PC.

The High-Res Adventure series is playable via AppleWin, but in the case of Time Zone, a specific version is needed. If you are using a later version, the game will freeze at one point, making the game unwinnable. I have not found any other emulators that are compatible with it.

You can download this old version here.

The first time you run this, it must initialize. This will take several minutes, and may seem like it has frozen. But rest assured, it hasn't, and it will run without delay any subsequent times.

The DOS version of Softporn Adventure will run on DOSBox. I have not played any of the other games, but presumably they all work on AppleWin, and the games with DOS versions will run on DOSBox.

Games

• Dragon's Keep
• Hi-Res Adventure #1: Mystery House
• Hi-Res Adventure #0: Mission Asteroid
• Hi-Res Adventure #2: The Wizard and the Princess
• Hi-Res Adventure #3: Cranston Manor
• Hi-Res Adventure #4: Ulysses and the Golden Fleece
• Hi-Res Adventure #5: Time Zone
• Hi-Res Adventure #6: The Dark Crystal
• Mickey's Space Adventure
• Softporn Adventure
• Troll's Tale
• Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood

AGI engine (1984-1988)

In 1983, IBM approached Sierra-Online, commissioning them to create a game that would show off the capabilities of their new home computer product, the PCJr. That game would be King's Quest, and although the PCJr was not successful, King's Quest was a record-breaking hit. If Mystery House was the first graphical adventure game, then King's Quest was the first animated adventure game, featuring environments in which one could roam freely about, graphics with an illusion of dynamic depth, and sound and music. The engine, titled "Adventure Game Interpreter," would be re-tooled for MS-DOS, and used for sequels, other games, and other "quest" series.

The earlier AGI games would all be re-released with newer versions of the engine, for MS-DOS compatibility and other advantages that the newer engines brought. The true original versions of these games are actually fairly obscure - the vast majority of people who think they are familiar with the original King's Quest have, in fact, only played the 1987 AGI 2.0 re-release. The true original version didn't feature Greensleeves, wasn't DOS compatible (you booted the game right off a floppy disk), didn't have message windows for displaying text, and didn't have the same color palette as the screenshot above. All of that came with the AGI 2.0 re-release.

Graphics

AGI ran at a resolution of 160x200. Later versions would support EGA mode and run at 320x200 with 16 colors. Background and foreground graphics are vectors - they are drawn as a number of shapes each filled in with a solid color, with details added pixel by pixel. The engine also allows for fully animated sprites.

Sound

The PCJr featured three voice polyphonic sound, and every AGI game had music composed with this in mind. However, the standard IBM-Compatible sound hardware of the time was nothing but a simple one-tone beeper, which produces horrid results when playing back this music, and the vast majority of gamers who had played any AGI games have not heard what the music is supposed to sound like. Even DOSBox users, for the most part, haven't heard the right music. While DOSBox can emulate PCJr sound, it does not by default, and there's no obvious clue to its users that AGI games would sound better if they enabled this option.

Here is a comparison -
PC Speaker
PCJr polyphony

In addition, most of the AGI games were ported to the Apple IIGS (not the same as the Apple II). These versions featured synthesized instrumental music, some of it completely new material, some of it instrumental renditions of the original tunes. They even had sparse use of digitized sound effects, which wouldn't be seen in DOS games for years.
Apple II GS

Interface

AGI games are mostly keyboard controlled, with some very primitive mouse support in some versions (including ScummVM). The de facto control scheme is that arrow keys or the numberpad are used to move the main character, and commands are typed into a parser. Pressing a direction key a single time causes the character to begin moving in that direction, and pressing it a second time will cause the character to stop. The numpad is preferable to arrow keys, thanks to easier diagonal movement. The parser's flexibility varies from game to game, but it usually responds well to commands in the form of <verb> <noun>. Games seldom give useful feedback when a command is not understood - most games will only spit out a potentially confusing message in response, such as the infamous "How can you do that?" from King's Quest III. There are shortcut keys for commonly used commands such as saving, loading, examining the inventory, and sometimes game-specific commands such as jumping and swimming.

A few games vary from this scheme. The Black Cauldron uses a simplified command interface with keys for "look" and "use," and has no command parser. Mixed-Up Mother Goose has no interaction keys at all - you interact with objects and people simply by walking up to them. The Manhunter games completely break the interface mold, having not only no parsers, but no direct character control except during certain scenes. It's perhaps similar to a point and click interface, but with a keyboard, and different in ways that are difficult to describe in words.

Emulation

ScummVM supports AGI games, and is IMO the best way to play them. Be sure to enable PCJr emulation - this can be done by selecting a game, clicking "Edit game," "Audio," check "Override global audio settings," click the "Music Device" drop-down menu, and select "IBM PCjr Emulator."

For the Apple II GS versions, there's Kegs32. Read the directions - it's not intuitive.

Games

• The Black Cauldron
• Gold Rush!
• King's Quest
• King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne
• King's Quest III: To Heir is Human
• King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella ^
• Leisure Suit Larry: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards
• Manhunter: New York
• Manhunter 2: San Francisco
• Mixed-Up Mother Goose
• Police Quest
• Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter
• Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge

^ There were two versions of KQ4 released simultaneously - the AGI version listed here, and the SCI version which will be discussed very soon. The AGI version was never released as part of any compilations and is somewhat obscure.

SCI0 engine (1988-1990)

In 1988, Sierra retired the AGI engine, and revolutionized computer games once again with King's Quest IV. With advanced graphics and animation capacity, an orchesrated musical score consisting of over 75 pieces written by a Hollywood composer,and a versatile scripting system, King's Quest IV would pioneer cinematic presentation in computer games. The sound track was particularly notable - it was the first game of any kind to support add-on sound cards. On computers equipped with a Roland MT-32, King's Quest IV would make extensive use of the module's support for custom instrumentation and produce impressive audio that would rival the music of CD-based games that wouldn't be common for years.

Sierra also released a version of King's Quest IV for older computers, using the old AGI engine, which was less demanding, but lacked the full cinematic grandeur as well as the orchestrated soundtrack. It sold poorly, prompting Sierra to retire the AGI engine, and develop exclusively with the new engine, dubbed "Sierra's Creative Interpreter." SCI was built with MS-DOS and other contemporary 16-bit systems in mind, allowing games to utilize more resources than what was possible given AGI's roots in IBM's PCJr. The engine featured an object-oriented scripting language, which allowed more complex and versatile game design to be implemented more easily and reliably than before.

Graphics

Like the MS-DOS versions of AGI, SCI0 supported EGA graphics, running at 320x200 at 16 colors. Unlike AGI, SCI0 was made with EGA graphics in mind from the beginning, and was not held back by legacy design constraints. Graphics resolution was effectively doubled, and the color palette was larger and consistent across different hardware. Backgrounds and foregrounds are still vectors, but at a higher effective resolution and with capacity for more advanced animations. Rather than being filled with solid colors, shapes were often filled with dithered patterns to approximate new colors, allowing scenes to simulate the appearance of a greater color depth than what EGA allowed.

With ScummVM, the graphics can be rendered at high color depth, mostly eliminating the need for dithering.

Sound

SCI pioneered the use of synthesized instrumental music in computer games. Every SCI0 game had a musical score that was composed especially for the Roland MT-32 synthesizer, a module that would become the de facto standard in computer music until the advent of General MIDI, largely because of the SCI adventure games. The SCI0 engine also supported AdLib synthesizer cards, which were simpler and produced less impressive sound, but were cheaper and in the long run more widespread thanks to Sound Blaster, which featured full AdLib compatibility.

So, once again, Sierra's music is largely unheard in its intended form. Newer sound cards feature MT-32 compatible modes that can play these soundtracks, usually by arranging General MIDI instruments to match MT-32 sounds, but this approach usually results in total cacophony. More recently, there have been attempts to create serious MT-32 software emulators, but they are incomplete, buggy, and there has been little progress for years now. An MT-32 module is necessary to hear SCI0 music as it was meant to be heard. AdLib emulation, on the other hand, is quite feasible. DOSBox features a solid AdLib emulator, which is also used by ScummVM. So for most gamers, AdLib emulation is the best way to listen to the music of these games.

Here is a comparison:
Adlib
MT-32

Interface

SCI0 games remain largely controlled by keyboard, with the same de facto scheme as AGI games. Mouse support is a standard feature, but most games only use it for menu navigation and as an alternate way of moving. Thanks to the versatility of SCI, many games feature action sequences, minigames, or other interactive sequences that invoke control schemes other than the standard. Hero's Quest even features an action-RPG fighting minigame that is invoked whenever the player encounters hostile forces.

The parser is more advanced than AGI's. The game will automatically pause when you begin typing a command, eliminating situations where you fail to perform an action in a limited timeframe because you couldn't type fast enough. The parser can understand more complex commands that would confuse the AGI parser, and is more likely to give useful, context-sensitive feedback when it fails to understand the input.

Although all SCI0 games used the same parser, it is not a standard SCI0 feature. Rather, it's a feature that King's Quest IV implemented in SCI0 through scripting, and that all subsequent SCI0 games would re-use and refine.

Emulation

ScummVM supports SCI0 games, and is also IMO the best way to play them, especially since it can render their graphics at a higher color depth than what is possible natively or through DOSBox emulation. If you manage to get ahold of a Roland MT-32, it can be connected to a modern PC using a USB-MIDI adapter, and ScummVM can be configured to use your real MT-32 for music playback. If not, then AdLib emulation should be enabled, which ScummVM uses by default.

Games

• Codename: ICEMAN
• The Colonel's Bequest
• Conquests of Camelot
• Hero's Quest: So You Want to be a Hero ^
• King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella
• Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places)
• Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals
• Mixed-Up Mother Goose (1990 remake)
• Police Quest 2: The Vengeance
• Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon

^ Re-released as Quest for Glory

SCI0.1 engine (1990)

SCI0.1 was a briefly used transitional engine version. It still used dithered 16-color EGA graphics and synthesized music, but also supported digitized sound effects and speech, which were sparingly used by the two games to be created for SCI0.1. It also had multilingual support, and select SCI0 games were re-released with this engine for the international market.

As with SCI0, ScummVM supports all SCI0.1 games.

Games

• King's Quest (1990 remake)
• Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire

SCI1 engine (1990-1991)

In 1990, Sierra would push the gaming world forward yet again with King's Quest V. Being the first adventure game to use CD-ROM technology, it presented gamers with dazzling hand-painted graphics, characters with full voice acting, and production values with a million-dollar budget, all for the first time in gaming history.

No less notable was the fully mouse-driven point & click interface. Although this was pioneered earlier by LucasArts's SCUMM engine with great success, Sierra streamlined it further by giving the player a number of different cursors, each with an icon representing a possible action, which could be accessed by a hidden menu bar on the top of the screen or by right-clicking to cycle through the available cursors. This allowed the entire screen to be used to show the game world, in contrast to the LucasArts SCUMM games where a portion of the screen housed verbs and inventory items (e.g. "USE · BUCKET · on DOOR").

Aside from supporting VGA graphics and CD-ROMs, the SCI1 engine was nearly identical to the SCI0.1 engine. What made the SCI1 games so distinguishable from games before were generally higher production values, as well as common features to SCI1 games that were never used in SCI0 games (such as the point and click interface). In fact, a couple of SCI1 games had disk-based EGA versions available for old computers, and these games were mutually compatible with SCI0.1 interpreters. For instance, you could mix the binaries of Quest for Glory II with the data files of King's Quest V EGA, and then King's Quest V EGA would be fully playable, with a point and click interface and digital sound effects, even though Quest for Glory II had a parser interface and had very few digital sound effects.

Graphics

SCI1 supported VGA graphics at 320x200 with 256 colors, and all SCI1 games were designed to take full advantage of this. Graphics were no longer vectors with dithered shading - artists would create real acrylic paintings, which would be scanned in and digitized as bitmaps. Actors were often filmed and rotoscoped in order to create realistically animated sprites.

Sound

Sound support is identical to SCI0.1. SCI1 games make greater use of digital sound effects, especially the games which had CD-ROM versions, which would be fully voice acted, and occasionally have digital music. Occasional digital music aside, SCI1 soundtracks were still composed for the Roland MT-32, with Adlib/Sound Blaster support for those without the expensive module.

A couple of SCI1 games would later receive patches to enable General MIDI support. A few others would be re-released and retrofitted with the SCI1.1 engine, which had General MIDI as a standard feature (more on this later). Neither case changed the fact that these games' scores were composed with FM synthesis in mind, and sound more consistent when played with Adlib, even if General MIDI allows stronger instrumentation.

Here is a comparison:
Adlib
MT-32
General MIDI

Interface

All SCI1 games are fully mouse driven. Some SCI1 games allow you to control the protagonist's movements with the keyboard, but most don't, and none require it. As with the parser in SCI0 games, the point and click interface is not a standard SCI1 feature - it was created for King's Quest V using SCI scripts, and re-used and refined for future games.

Emulation

ScummVM supports all SCI1 engine games, and my notes on SCI0 games apply here as well, minus the part about un-dithered graphics (since SCI1 graphics are not dithered in the first place).

Games

• Castle of Dr. Brain
• Conquests of the Longbow
• Ecoquest: The Search for Cetus ^
• King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder ^^
• Leisure Suit Larry 1 (1991 remake)
• Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work
• Mixed-Up Fairy Tales
• Police Quest 3: The Kindred
• Space Quest I (1991 remake)
• Space Quest IV ^

^ Re-released as CD talkie, retrofited with SCI1.1 engine
^^ Released in disk and CD talkie versions, later re-released for Windows retrofitted with SCI1.1 engine

SCI1.1 engine (1992-1993)

SCI1.1 made its debut with King's Quest VI, which would be recognized as the crowning achievement of the long-running series. The CD-ROM edition began with a landmark FMV introduction movie, a new feature to the engine, featured professional Hollywood voice acting, and had more detailed artwork and animation.

SCI1.1 games would increasingly take advantage of CD-ROM's capacity and feature high quality voice acting, though FMV support wasn't used extensively. Other new features included scaling sprites, allowing objects to become smaller as they moved farther way, true General MIDI support, allowing music to be high quality without needing an external synthesizer module, and considerable internal changes. SCI1.1 games had both DOS and Windows versions available.

Game design would also change somewhat - Sierra's adventure games had, even since the AGI days, been gradually becoming less open-ended and with less ability to explore and experiment, and becoming more linear, more controlled, and more focused on writing. SCI1.1 games in particular tended to be longer than previous games, and with few, if any situations where the player could cause a situation that put the game into an unwinnable state (such as failing to collect an important item in a room that is no longer accessible).

Graphics

DOS versions ran at VGA, at 320x200 with 256 colors, just like SCI1. Windows versions ran at 640x480 with 256 colors, though the artwork remained 320x200 that was simply upscaled to 640x480. The higher resolution allowed for better sprite scaling and smaller, more precise mouse cursors, but little else. The only SCI1.1 game to make further use of this resolution was King's Quest VI, which had higher resolution character artwork with dynamic lip-syncing.

Sound

By 1992, General MIDI had been standardized, and was gradually replacing FM synthesized music. All SCI1.1 games were composed using a Roland Sound Canvas - a General MIDI synthesizer. All SCI1.1 games supported MT-32 and AdLib as well, but not all games had the same amount of care ensuring that the music sounded any good when played with these devices. Luckily, Windows now comes with a software MIDI synthesizer which is actually a pretty good approximation of what a Roland Sound Canvas sounded like. A couple of games sound funky at times, but for the most part, Windows MIDI Synth works fine for SCI1.1 games.

The short of it is, you can hear the music of SCI1.1 games more or less how they were meant to be heard without any special equipment.

Emulation

The Windows versions of these games are problematic, and will not run at all in 64-bit Windows. Fortunately, ScummVM supports all SCI1.1 games. It will default to Adlib emulation - change it by selecting an SCI1.1 game, clicking "Edit game," "Audio," check "Override global audio settings," click the "Music Device" drop-down menu, and select "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth."

Games

• The Dagger of Amon Ra ^
• EcoQuest 2: Lost Secret of the Rainforest
• Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist ^
• The Island of Dr. Brain
• King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow ^
• Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out ^^
• Mixed-Up Mother Goose (1992 remake)
• Pepper's Adventures in Time
• Police Quest I (1992 remake)
• Quest for Glory I (1992 remake)
• Quest for Glory III: The Wages of War
• Space Quest V: The Next Mutation

^ Released in disk and CD talkie versions
^^ Released in disk and CD talkie versions, later re-released retrofitted with SCI2 engine and upgraded with SVGA graphics

SCI2 engine (1993-1996)

SCI2 debuted with Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, on both disks and CD-ROM. The CD-ROM version featured professional voice acting from well-known actors such as Tim Curry, Mark Hamil, and Michael Dorn, and had FMVs throughout the game. Both DOS and Windows versions supported 640x480 SVGA graphics and used 32-bit extensions, as these were now standard features of the engine.

Every SCI2 game would have a CD-ROM version available, and most of them were exclusively on that format. SCI2 games would feature more dialog, more FMVs, and higher resolution graphics than before. SCI2 also introduced multi-CD games, including the 7-disc monstrosity known as Phantasmagoria. Some SCI2 games continued to use General MIDI soundtracks, but others would feature entirely digital soundtracks.

Emulation

ScummVM does not yet support SCI2 games. And as with SCI1.1, the Windows versions are problematic and will not run at all in 64-bit Windows. Fortunately, most SCI2 games are also DOS compatible, and DOSBox plays great with them. Be sure to run the setup utilities and ensure they are configured to use General MIDI for their music.

Consider using a fanmade DOSBox installer from SierraHelp. They will automatically perform a full installation from the disc, eliminating the need to play with a disc in the drive, and in some cases include patches to fix old issues with the original versions, or even patches to fix new issues that were introduced with compilations.

Unfortunately, some SCI2 games are *not* DOS compatible. SierraHelp may offer some help with these games if you are running 32-bit Windows, but if you have 64-bit Windows, you will need to [up a Windows 3.1 installation within a DOSBox session], which is complicated.

Games

• Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers ^
• Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within
• King's Quest VII
• Leisure Suit Larry 6 (SVGA version)
• Mixed-Up Mother Goose Deluxe ^^
• Phantasmagoria
• Police Quest: Open Season ^
• Police Quest: SWAT
• Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness ^
• Shivers ^^
• Space Quest 6: The Spinal Frontier
• Torin's Passage

^ Released in disk and CD talkie versions
^^ Exclusive to Windows

SCI3 engine (1996)

SCI3 was Sierra's final version of the long-lived engine. All SCI3 games were exclusively CD-ROM, and all SCI3 games used fully digital soundtracks. Some games were available in both DOS and Windows, and some only Windows, but the Windows versions were fully 32-bit.

Emulation

DOSBox is no longer necessary, as these games all have 32-bit Windows versions, and will run on modern computers, even 64-bit Windows. But I recommend using fanmade installers from SquirtTheCat - they fix some bugs and enable a number of handy features

Games

• Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!
• Lighthouse: The Dark Being
• Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh
• RAMA

Post-SCI

By 1997, the gaming industry was rapidly moving away from adventure games, and just as rapidly embracing 3D graphics. Sierra would be bought out by a business conglomerate, resold, reorganized, and face massive layoffs despite all their profitable games. They would make only a few more adventure games over the next fewyears, most of them using 3D accelerated graphics. By 1998, nearly all of the talent behind the adventure games of days past had moved on. In 1999, Sierra released Gabriel Knight 3. This would be the last adventure game ever developed or published by Sierra.

Emulation

None of these games are DOS compatible, and yet, they are more problematic than the earlier SCI3 games. Fanmade installers from SierraHelp and SquirtTheCat may help overcome several potential issues.

Games

• Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned
• King's Quest: Mask of Eternity
• Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire
• Shivers 2: Harvest of Souls